Hot on the heels of big launches from Samsung and Apple, Amazon is the latest tech giant to send out invites to media for an upcoming event, where all clues point to the firm releasing several new devices.
Invites have been sent out for an upcoming event to be held in New York City on September 30.
Judging by the attached image, the event is set to reveal a slew of new hardware from Amazon’s many product lines. The composite is made up of what looks to be two Amazon Echo speakers, a colour screen Kindle and what could be a Fire TV.
Amazon used its last big event Stateside to launch Alexa+, its next-generation update to its Alexa AI assistant, but there was no new hardware. It looks like Amazon will make up for that in a couple of weeks’ time.
In recent years Amazon has concentrated on its smaller Echo speaker line up with the Echo Pop and Echo Dot, but the images teased here in the top left and top right of the image appear to show devices with glowing rings on the top of larger units, indicating we could see updates to long-forgotten rangers such as the Amazon Echo Studio from 2019.
This speaker looked a lot like Apple’s HomePod but hasn’t been updated for years.
It’s also a while since we’ve seen a cheaper Echo speaker with quality audio chops, as the small Echoes Amazon has preferred to update in recent years are certainly cheap, but their audio quality leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to blasting your tunes.
On the bottom right of the image is what appears to be a colour Kindle screen, indicating a new device that could be part of the firm’s Kindle Colorsoft line up. The first Kindle Colorsoft only launched last year, with a slightly cheaper model unveiled a few weeks ago.
Zooming in, you can see some text on the Kindle’s screen that says “stroke of a pen”, heavily hinting the new colour Kindle will have pen input – just like Amazon’s large Kindle Scribe line up. Perhaps the Scribe is getting a full colour version. We’ll have to wait and see.
The bottom left half appears to be a TV screen, indicating updates to Amazon’s Fire TV hardware or platform, though that also leaves the door open for updates to the Fire tablet range, too. Recent rumours suggest Amazon is mulling a high-end Fire tablet that runs full Android and isn’t constrained as its current range is, to Fire OS, which doesn’t support Google apps and has other restrictions.
The event in NYC on September 30 starts at 10am Eastern, which is 3pm UK time. It’ll be held by Amazon SVP Panos Panay, the executive who recently defected to Amazon after years heading up Microsoft’s Surface hardware division.
Amazon doesn’t always stream its launch events, but Express.co.uk will have all the latest from the event on the day.